A Woman's Testament (Jokyo) is a 1960 film from Japan.
It is an anthology film consisting of three stories of women making their way in a Japan where political and sexual mores were changing in the years after the war. The three stories are:
- "The Woman Who Seems to Want to Nibble Ears": Kimiko is a bar girl. She puts on sexy cocktail dresses and chats up men in bars. She isn't quite a prostitute, because she almost never completes the sex act with the men she attracts; after getting the money up front and sometimes after going with them to a hotel room, she comes up with some convenient excuse to leave. Kimiko has set her sights on a rich young man named Masami, the son of an industrialist. In fact, she starts to hope that he might marry her and take her out of the bar life.
- "The Woman Who Sells at a High Price": A writer named Yasuchi has disappeared. In fact, he has made his way to the beach and is contemplating suicide. He is standing on the edge of a cliff clearly about to throw himself off it, when he spots Tsuneko, a startlingly beautiful woman, nearby. She is burning letters from her dead husband. He follows her to her house nearby, which she says she must sell because she can't bear the bad memories...but there's more to the story. (Directed by Kon Ichikawa).
- "The Woman Who Forgot to Love": Mitsu (Machiko Kyo) is a former geisha who, years ago, broke up with her true love and instead married an innkeeper. Her husband died, Mitsu retained the inn, and she became a successful businesswoman. When she meets her old lover again, buried feelings rise to the surface.
Tropes:
- Anthology Film: Three segments of 30-odd minutes each combined into a feature film.
- As You Know:
- As Kimiko goes back to the bar, her little sister Kazu says "I won't tell Mum or our brother either." (Oddly, the brother is never seen or mentioned again.)
- Mitsu's father-in-law says he wants some sex. After Mitsu refuses, he tells a lot of stuff she already knows about how back in the day, after her husband apparently died young, Mitsu entered into an affair with her father-in-law in return for him not kicking her out of the bar.
- Bathtub Scene: Tsuneko suggests that Yasuchi take a bath in her bathtub. He is enjoying the water when he's surprised to see her coming in to join him. (This being 1960, the film cuts away.)
- Big-Breast Pride: After Kimiko tells her little sister Kazu that Kazu will need a bigger rack to attract men in bars, Kazu ruefully says that her older sister's bosom is "pretty splendid." Kimiko looks back at her little sister and winks.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kimiko is crushed to find out that Masami didn't have any intention to marry her, and in fact is getting married the very next day, after they had sex. Masami for his part seems to have second thoughts about parting with her, and comes back to her humble apartment and asks her to marry him. She scornfully rejects him. So Kimiko loses out on romance and security—but there's hope for her, because she's been investing her money in the very company that Masami's dad owns, and she's got a nice little stock portfolio going.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: In a rather unsettling exchange, Kazu, who looks to be in her mid-teens, says that she wishes she could go out and be a bar girl like Kimiko. Kimiko cheerfully says "You'll need bigger breasts first."
- Chekhov's Gun: Yasuchi is shown picking up an incompletely burned letter of Tsuneko's. He tells her at the end that it was a bill for a kimono, which had her name on it. He knew all along that she was scamming him and he played along because he was in love. (Also he flipped the house for a profit.)
- Creative Closing Credits: The film ends with cheeky animated credits in which cartoon figures of women, done cardboard cutout style, lose articles of clothing.
- Geisha:
- The group of schoolchildren in "The Woman Who Forgot to Love" go to see a traditional geisha performance, with stylized dancing and music. There seems to be a deliberate comment on the melding of old and new when the musical accompaniment, a woman singing and playing the shamisen, is revealed to be a tape recording.
- Mitsu was herself a geisha back in the day and Yumiko accuses her—apparently correctly—of using her geisha wiles to worm her way into Yumiko's family.
- Genre Anthology: Three stories about women who, to one extent or another, use their sexuality to get by in 1960 Japan.
- The Ghost: Kimiko's father, mentioned several times. He's apparently The Alcoholic and a serial adulterer and completely useless, as the family is on the edge of starvation and Kimiko is their only support. He never appears onscreen.
- I Have to Iron My Dog: Kimiko attracts a dim-witted businessman at a bar and goes with him to a hotel room. In fact he seems to already know her. He's getting all excited for sex when Kimiko gets a pre-arranged phone call from her little sister and says she has to leave, because her father's being taken to the hospital for an operation.
- I Will Wait for You: Mitsu never tells Kanemitsu this, but she seems to have decided to wait for him until he serves his sentence for fraud.
- Let the Past Burn: Yasuchi finds a grief-stricken Tsuneko burning her late husband's old letters by the seaside. Later subverted when it all turns out to be a scam.
- Match Cut: "The Woman Who Forgot to Love" has a cut from Yumiko eating noodles to Yumiko's boyfriend eating noodles. She proceeds to deliver a whole bunch of exposition to him about how Mitsu married her brother.
- No-Tell Motel: It seems that the hotel where Kimiko and Masami go is one of these. There's erotic art hanging on the wall, and right before Masami leaves, another man and woman exit, with the man muttering to the woman that "We leave separately."
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: "The Woman Who Seems to Want to Nibble Ears" ends with Kimiko walking across a bridge to the financial district, about to invest the money that Masami gave her in the stock market.
- Old Flame: Mitsu is rattled when her old flame Kanemitsu, whom she hasn't seen in years, calls her up and asks to get together.
- The Reveal: The reveal of "The Woman Who Sells at a High Price" comes about halfway through. Tsuneko is a con artist and her whole grieving widow deal is an act.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: While Kimiko is usually The Tease with the marks she chats up in the bar, she's in love with Masami, and thinks he might marry her. So she puts out. The camera pans up from the bed to a drawing of a half-naked geisha girl on the wall, and the lights in the room click out.
- The Tease: Kimiko does this for a living. She has taken up with many men in bars, but she says that she's only had to have sex with them twice, because every other time she's been able to get out of it (after getting the money).
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Where Kimiko puts the money that one of her marks, an old classmate, gives her in the bar.
